Packed with the most recent and relevant articles in the field, CONSTRUCTIONS OF DEVIANCE: SOCIAL POWER, CONTEXT, AND INTERACTION, Seventh Edition, shows you how to apply the concepts and theories of deviance to the world around you. The text’s current, comprehensive coverage includes both theoretical analyses and ethnographic illustrations of how deviance is socially constructed, organized, and managed. Seasoned authors and award-winning professors, Patricia Adler and Peter Adler cover a wide variety of deviant acts–challenging you to see the diversity and pervasiveness of deviance in society. The text presents deviance as a component of society and examines the construction of deviance in terms of differential social power. Its unique “interactionist” or “constructionist” perspective on deviance explores the processes in society that create deviance. Ethnographic in character, the authors’ intriguing selected studies focus on the experiences of deviants, the deviant-making process, and the ways in which people labeled as deviant in society react to that label. The balanced selection of readings is timely and engaging, while in-depth introduction, explanation of theory, and discussion questions after each reading guide you through the fascinating material.

About the Author

Patricia A. Adler (Ph.D., University of California, San Diego) is Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1999, she was named Outstanding Teacher in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and in 2005 she received the Outstanding Researcher Award for the Boulder campus. In 2004, Adler was awarded the Mentor Excellence Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. She has written and taught in the areas of deviance, social psychology, sociology of gender, and the sociology of children. A second edition of her book, WHEELING AND DEALING (Columbia University Press), a study of upper-level drug traffickers, was published in 1993.

Peter Adler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Denver, where he served as chair from 1987 to 1993. His research interests include social psychology, qualitative methods, and the sociology of sport and leisure. Dr. Adler was honored with the University Lecturer Award (1997) and as the Outstanding Scholar/Teacher (2005) at the University of Denver, and in 2005 the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) named him Feminist Mentor of the Year. Dr. Adler is past co-president of the Midwest Sociological Society, and he received his doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.

This book is a reader, meaning it is a compilation of readings from multiple authors. It has a bit of a symbolic interactionist slant, but this is appropriate for the topic. There are some readings I miss from the earlier editions, like Snow and Anderson’s piece about stigma management and the homeless and Flower’s phone sex operators. However, newer additions to the book make sense and update it for students, while keeping core classics like Chambliss and Becker.